Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Other domains hosted on same server showing up in SERP for 1st site's keywords
-
For the website in question, the first domain alphabetically on the shared hosting space, strange search results are appearing on the SERP for keywords associated with the site.
Here is an example:
A search for "unique company name" shows the results: www.uniquecompanyname.com as the top result.
But on pages 2 and 3, we are getting results for the same content but for domains hosted on the same server. Here are some examples with the domain name replaced:
UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE
ftp.DOMAIN2.com/?action=news&id=63
META DESCRIPTION TEXTUNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
www.DOMAIN3.com/?action=news&id=120
META DESCRIPTION TEXT2UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
www.DOMAIN4.com/?action=news&id=120
META DESCRIPTION TEXT2UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 3
mail.DOMAIN5.com/?action=category&id=17
META DESCRIPTION TEXT3ns5.DOMAIN6.com/?action=article&id=27
There are more but those are just some examples.
These other domain names being listed are other customer domains on the same VPS shared server. When clicking the result the browser URL still shows the other customer domain name B but the content is usually the 404 page. The page title and meta description on that page is not displayed the same as on the SERP.As far as we can tell, this is the only domain this is occurring for.So far, no crawl errors detected in Webmaster Tools and moz crawl not completed yet.
-
For those that are interested, we figured out the root of the problem and the fix. Maybe this will help someone down the road. Thanks to all that responded.
As it seems all the domains/accounts hosted on our VPS are top level; so we couldn’t use robots.txt to fix this.The problem:
-We have a handful of websites using a shared IP address – Only sites with SSL cert get a dedicated IP
-Some of these websites have additional A record DNS names (mail.domain1, ns5.domain2, etc) that all resolve to that shared IP address
-Within your browser if you went to one of those records it would pull up the website (account) that is first alphabetically within that shared IP pool
-It’s assumed that a website or multiple websites somewhere in the web must have linked these domain names somewhere on their webpages – so search engines crawled them for the content of that first alphabetical website
-Search engines then indexed the content of that site for these other DNS A records and displayed the alternate URLs in the SERPSThe fix:
Edit Apache’s httpd.conf file on our VPS – adding a new (first listed) virtual directory of that shared IP address to point to the servers cpanel default cgi page instead of listing one of our hosted accounts first.
This page describes what we needed done and what fixed it for us: http://forums.spry.com/cpanel-whm/1568-how-can-i-change-default-page-ip-address-points.html
Thanks again!
-
You should be able to resolve this with robots.txt and .htaccess files, but one more thing I've learned to do is to use a domain name for the primary domain that I do not plan to submit to Google for indexing. For example, I'll use arbitrary color names like silverblue.net as the primary domain and then the domains I intend to index will be virtual domains. This isn't really necessary but it helps me keep all my domain names straight in my head and avoid the issue you described above.
Best,
Christopher -
Thanks for the replies, guys. We are going to try Christopher's suggestion first and we'll update the question when it's resolved!
-
The other domains are ours, yes.
Oh, that's a horse of a different color. If you have multiple domains on one account, one domain will be the primary domain and the other domains will be virtual domains. If you look at the file structure on your server, all the virtual domains will be sub-folders under the primary domain. You need to create a robots.txt file in the primary domain that blocks the spiders from discovering the other domains through the sub-directory structure. Otherwise, all the virtual domains will be duplicated, once via the primary domain and again via the virtual domain.
Best,
Christopher -
The other domains are ours, yes.
I don't think any of them are using Joomla.
-
Are those other domains also yours, by any chance and/or is this a Joomla cms?
-
Wow... that's not so ideal. My guess is that all of those sites are sharing the same IP address, and the server's settings are such that if you hit the IP address with a forward slash (i.e. http://00.00.00.00/domainname/) it's showing content.
My $0.02 is to find a new hosting company.... and one that gives each site it's own IP address instead of doing shared-level hosting with the same IP address in a name-based space.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is Moz Premium Show Authenticate Keyword Difficulty States???
Hi, I am a regular user of Moz premium. I was advised some of my friends about Moz benefits. 4 months ago I found a low competition micro niche longtail keyword and made a website on it. The keyword difficulty was 16 and I was confident that I will rank on the top page. but now after posting 15 articles of that micro niche, I am still ranking on 129 position on Google search results. Can anybody advise me what is the problem with my site. Was the keyword difficulty had manupulated states on authenticative. My site name and https://www.vixpr.com/. Please guide me how I can take further benefits of Moz Premium.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Iuj873g0 -
Shopify Site with Multiple Domains?
Hey there! My client has a website on Shopify. I don't even know how to open this can of worms, but let me try. The site URL is: https://mobilityequipmentforless.com/ However, there is another (older?) URL that gets updated as the main site gets updated and shows the exact same content. It's a straight duplicate, but is it's own URL and doesn't redirect to the main site. https://www.powerchairrecyclers.com/ And this isn't the SITE.Shopify back-end site name that was used for set up initially. I just have no idea what's going on here. Not sure if it's a serious error that needs to be fixed, or if it's something weird with how Shopify work. Any insight would be immensely helpful. Thanks! Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | naturalsociety0 -
Why does the order of the keywords affect my SERP? And what can I do to improve?
Hi all, So, if you google "london life coach" my site appears #2 (www.nickhatter.com) But if you google "life coach London" my SERP seems to fluctuate between #3 up to #6. If you google "life coach in London" my SERP is a solid #2/3. I don't get it all. Would someone care to explain? Also, if you have any tips on how I might improve the EAT of my website please do feel free to weigh in! Many thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NickHatster
Nick0 -
Why some domains and sub-domains have same DA, but some others don't?
Hi I noticed for some blog providers in my country, which provide a sub-domian address for their blogs. the sub-domain authority is exactly as the main domain. Whereas, for some other blog providers every subdomain has its different and lower authority. for example "ffff.blog.ir" and "blog.ir" both have domain authority of 60. It noteworthy to mention that the "ffff.blog.ir" does not even exist! This is while mihanblog.com and hfilm.mihanblog.com has diffrent page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayatarh5451230 -
Should I redirect a domain we control but which has been labeled 'toxic' or just shut it down?
Hi Mozzers: We recently launched a site for a client which involved bringing in and redirecting content which formerly had been hosted on different domains. One of these domains still existed and we have yet to bring over the content from it. It has also been flagged as a suspicious/toxic backlink source to our new domain. Would I be wise to redirect this old domain or should I just shut it down? None of the pages seem to have particular equity as link sources. Part of me is asking myself 'Why would we redirect a domain deemed toxic, why not just shut it down.' Thanks in advance, dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Forwarded vanity domains, suddenly resolving to 404 with appended URL's ending in random 5 characters
We have several vanity domains that forward to various pages on our primary domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SS.Digital
e.g. www.vanity.com (301)--> www.mydomain.com/sub-page (200) These forwards have been in place for months or even years and have worked fine. As of yesterday, we have seen the following problem. We have made no changes in the forwarding settings. Now, inconsistently, they sometimes resolve and sometimes they do not. When we load the vanity URL with Chrome Dev Tools (Network Pane) open, it shows the following redirect chains, where xxxxx represents a random 5 character string of lower and upper case letters. (e.g. VGuTD) EXAMPLE:
www.vanity.com (302, Found) -->
www.vanity.com/xxxxx (302, Found) -->
www.vanity.com/xxxxx (302, Found) -->
www.vanity.com/xxxxx/xxxxx (302, Found) -->
www.mydomain.com/sub-page/xxxxx (404, Not Found) This is just one example, the amount of redirects, vary wildly. Sometimes there is only 1 redirect, sometimes there are as many as 5. Sometimes the request will ultimately resolve on the correct mydomain.com/sub-page, but usually it does not (as in the example above). We have cross-checked across every browser, device, private/non-private, cookies cleared, on and off of our network etc... This leads us to believe that it is not at the device or host level. Our Registrar is Godaddy. They have not encountered this issue before, and have no idea what this 5 character string is from. I tend to believe them because per our analytics, we have determined that this problem only started yesterday. Our primary question is, has anybody else encountered this problem either in the last couple days, or at any time in the past? We have come up with a solution that works to alleviate the problem, but to implement it across hundreds of vanity domains will take us an inordinate amount of time. Really hoping to fix the cause of the problem instead of just treating the symptom.0 -
Google cache is showing my UK homepage site instead of the US homepage and ranking the UK site in US
Hi There, When I check the cache of the US website (www.us.allsaints.com) Google returns the UK website. This is also reflected in the US Google Search Results when the UK site ranks for our brand name instead of the US site. The homepage has hreflang tags only on the homepage and the domains have been pointed correctly to the right territories via Google Webmaster Console.This has happened before in 26th July 2015 and was wondering if any had any idea why this is happening or if any one has experienced the same issueFDGjldR
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adzhass0 -
Why is my servers ip address showing up in Webmaster Tools?
In links to my site in Google Webmaster Tools I am showing over 28,000 links from an ip address. The ip address is the address that my server is hosted on. For example it shows 200.100.100.100/help, almost like there are two copies of my site, one under the domain name and one under the ip address. Is this bad? Or is it just showing up there and Google knows that it is the same since the ip and domain are from the same server?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0